Friday, July 25, 2014

First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

This novel is a thriller with a time travel twist. North's narrator, Harry August, doesn't travel in time using technology, but some unexplained phenomenon of his person sends him back to his own birth after his death. Every time. And each time he gets sent back to his own birth to re-live his life, he remembers the events of his previous life. Others exist in the future and in the past with this same looped-life quality. Because their lives overlap slightly--one person being a child when another person is old--they can send messages up and down history.

The problem occurs when one of these multi-lived people decides to change history and brings technological advances into existence earlier than they normally arrive. Then he starts killing permanently others with returning lives who would oppose him.

The reader learns the hard-knock wisdom that Harry August picks up in his serial lives and waits to find out if August will be killed permanently by the Other who is trying to manage human history and destiny through his own lives.

This is an exciting read, even if a much less exciting review.